Adult Mom – “Laying On My Floor”

Adult Mom make the kind of music you put on when you’ve got no one left to call. Let Steph Knipe’s scratchy alto-whisper wrap around you like the caring embrace that you just fucking can’t find sometimes, because that’s what “Laying On My Floor” is about. It’s about feeling abandoned, feeling desperate and broken, and realizing that those feelings are starting to be more familiar than anything else in your life. Knipe sings: “My dad says, ‘Why do you always fight, for love that always bites?’” and desperate memories of clawing to get someone’s affection seem to rise and swell with the line’s repetition. “He only liked me when I looked away,” Knipe admits, before hammering home the real point of the song: “I close my eyes and hope I never do the same.” The song is spare, keeping the quiet vocal line front and center with skeleton guitar lines and muted percussion, but the feeling inside of it is huge. It’s difficult to imagine the strength it takes to write a song about your own despair, and then twist it into a determined, hopeful promise not to be like the people who hurt you. That’s the kind of songwriting that made Adult Mom a Band To Watch, and what makes Momentary Lapse Of Happily such an anticipated record. If you’re still unfamiliar, check out other tracks “Survival” and “Told Ya So,” and listen to “Laying On My Floor” below.

Momentary Lapse Of Happily is out 7/28 via Tiny Engines. Preorder it here.